Inspiration

With the cruise completed, cars caught up and ready, it was time for a course setup to be decided on and compiled for the gymkhana, thankfully the lovely people of the Tui Brewery had allowed us the use of their car-park.  I think the best thing about the gymkhana was the selection of random cars that took part, some more amusing to watch than others and some completely surprising in their results, the one that amazed the most was the Volvo of durty.  It’s quite the Sci-fi looking machine and didn’t appear to be doing so well but the times were telling stories that many eyes couldn’t fathom.

Ground Control to Major Alex.

Front tugging his way around the ‘cones in the two different layouts you’d be forgiven for thinking the Volvo would end somewhere in the middle of the pack though come time to tally the times (deliberately annoying wording) we thought our circuits were dead and something was wrong.  Though the stopwatch doesn’t lie and Alex had finished a very respectable 3rd place, immediately behind Jess/alfalfa (who was using Zep’s Gem).

Though this is actually Leon/zep, but it's the car so it'll do.

…and the winner of the gymkhana was part of my travelling family, my wife/partner/threesome participant Davecolli, driving one of oldschool’s most amazingly presented vehicles…

…which he later broke…

…but before he broke Peter’s pride and joy, he won the event, driving entirely flacidly, and like a 3month old fart.

Team Retep Racing.

You could see he was driving well but with an open diff working in his favour, the car wasn’t all over the show like some of the other participants.

Look at this joker!

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Fresh off the container from Japan!

I now have all the components required to build the audio setup for the RX-7 (and eventually squid, seeing as there’s enough stuff for two cars here, plus some leftovers…) As soon as I find my spare 12V battery I can get on to testing each unit to see what is operational and what isn’t.

No, I'm not going to put them all in one car.

Being a “Component” system, the cassette decks don’t actually function unless plugged in via one of the main amps (each module has a ‘standard’ Pioneer 8-pin connector), with the graphic equalizer being an in-line unit. As you can see from the photo there are three amps to choose from – the top one is a “baby” GM-2 with 6.5W of continuous power, the middle one is a midrange GM-4M with 16W, and the bottom one is the mean mother thirty-watt GM-D8. Nifty.

The decks themselves, from top to bottom, are a KP-77G, another KP-707G (to match the one I bought off trademe for a dollar), and a KP-88G.

Now all I gotta do is conjure up some cassettes to test with. Off to Real Groovy with five bucks I shall go!

Well, okay, maybe one last thing needs to be said: MOAR LOW IS REQUIRED.

At long last, they have been fitted.

Time for some coilovers ex Japan? Blarrrghh! It never ends!

fronts: 15×6.5+14.5, 205/55/15
rears: 15×7.0+15, 225/50/15

Retro audio revisited

May 10, 2011

To anyone who’s noticed my lack of updates recently, apologies for the leave of absence but moving house is such a chore. All settled in to the new place now though, so let the posts re-commence flowing henceforth! It’s also been a while since regular blog entries I know, but Michael should be back from Nationals any minute and will most likely have a swag of photos and crazy anecdotes to share in the upcoming days to keep you all entertained.

on to the subject at hand: $1 reserve auctions on Trademe are awesome, aren’t they? Especially when you pick up gems such as this vintage “Lonesome Car-boy” KP-707G component tape deck in unknown condition, but still in its original packaging.

For a dollar.

Mint. In Box.

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